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KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Farbtoner posted:

Back in 2009 when they did their pilot-off Uncle Grandpa was probably my favorite, so seeing that they're doing something is pretty great.

I'm still sad that we're never going to see more of Danger Planet. That was my favorite one

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KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Digital Scumbag posted:

I've been watching the new Looney Tunes with my daughter, and Lola cracks me up every episode.

The new Looney Tunes show has a lot of areas it could improve but damned if they didn't do the impossible and make Lola Bunny an actually entertaining and worthwhile character

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Dangerous Person posted:

I quite like Craig of the Creek. It reminds me of the episodes of Ed Edd n Eddy where they went deep with their imaginations

Speaking of Craig of the Creek I just discovered that Jeff Rosenstock does all the music for it and my mind was loving blown!

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

readingatwork posted:


Also gently caress the fact that the mayor is still in charge and well liked after he embezzled the town’s taxes and nearly got the everyone robbed. I don’t think the show realizes just how lovely that was of him.

Well, the first statement is true, the latter not so much...

I've been really digging Amphibia thus far. I thought it wouldn't hook me due to being more episodic (The episodic nature of Regular Show being exactly what made me eventually lose interest) but I keep coming back to it. The only thing that keeps throwing me off is whenever it comes up that Anne's only 13, her lanky design totally looks for usual cartoon shorthand for "between the ages of 14-15 because growth spurt". It's a similar disconnect to when I think to consciously of Steven Universe being 14 and not, like, 8.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

angerbeet posted:

I agree with whoever said they were kind of working backward with that Owl House finale. They definitely already had it planned out and the rest of the season kind of went in a different direction? Also it seemed like the animation wasn't as fluid.

It's kind of ironic to me that The Owl House felt like it was going to be the more story-focused show, yet I'm finding myself much more invested in the ongoing story that's been emerging in Amphibia, a show that felt like it was going to be way more episodic and self-contained...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

The 7th Guest posted:

in a reddit AMA Braly confirmed season 3 is the final season

I honestly kind of expected that: Disney has almost always plotted their animated series within the traditional 65 episode framework for syndication, which usually leads to shows lasting for less than five seasons. This has held true even for their more recent works: Gravity Falls ran for 2 seasons (Though this was largely the decision of Alex Hirsch, I think it was the plan for the get-go for the series to only run for 3 seasons), Wander Over Yonder ran for 2, Star Vs the Forces of Evil for 4, and Ducktales for 3. With the rate the story's been going, three seasons seems about right to wrap up the plot threads they've introduced, and I'm kind of cool with that? I love the hell out of Amphibia and I'm rather have three seasons that are really good instead of ten seasons that are mostly meh.

The 7th Guest posted:

uhh sonic prime lol

I mean, I thought Sonic Boom had some pretty good moments, though I think the quality of this new Sonic series is going to depend heavily on which of the various tones the series has taken over the years they're going to adhere to. Any time they try to do SERIOUS PLOT STUFF FOR SERIOUS HEDGEHOGS with Sonic it just doesn't end up working (yes that includes Sonic SATAM, that show sucked fight me irl!)

KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Apr 15, 2021

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

BioEnchanted posted:

We have two more weeks of episodes I think. And Sasha has basically steamrolled any chance she'd ever of had of making up with Anne and Marcy. She's directly betrayed them twice already, they aren't going to give her a third chance, nor should they. I'm hoping that when the girls return home, it will be basically to put Sasha under house arrest for Amphibia's safety.

If they are going the more likely route though she's gonna have a LOT of work to do in season 3 to make up for all of her bullshit.

I'm assuming it's going to be a case where Grimes' betrayal goes off against Sasha's wishes or in a way she doesn't expect and Anne and Marcy are going to blame it on her. I also haven't ruled out the probability that Marcy might end up on the wrong side of this conflict since the creators have said Sprig is Anne's first healthy friendship and I feel like Marcy has seemed a bit too supportive and nice thus far to support that

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

BioEnchanted posted:

I think part of my harshness is because I keep forgetting that the humans are basically still kids simply due to their height, (like 12-14 I think unless i'm misremembering and they're more mid-teens), so I'm judging them like i'd judge an adult as a result. Just because of how much taller they are than the other characters.

Anne was transported to Amphiba on her 13th birthday, if I'm not mistaken, I assume Sasha and Marcie are 12-13 as well.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Having just watched the new Amphibia, can I just say I absolutely love Grime being super friendly yet still unnervingly intense around the Plantars and the other residents of Wartwood? It was also really nice getting a fun, low-stakes episode where everyone is happy before things inevitably get super heavy and messed up in the season finale?

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

BioEnchanted posted:

I'm curious if some of the moments with Grimes and the village/Plantars were genuine, or if all of it was affected. The cake after all wasn't a deliberate attack, more a cultural misunderstanding. I also like that Toad culture isn't ALL brutish, it runs the gamut between fighty and barbaric and thoughtful and gentle, so the toad bard that used to work with Grimes before him and his friend left feels less out of place.

I feel like, if nothing else, His three hour harp performance at the battle of the bands was entirely genuine. That sort of artistry can only come from the very bottom of your heart :swoon:

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Larryb posted:

Trailer for the upcoming Rugrats reboot:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=w9qvm5H5Zto

Is it just me or is the lip synch/mouth animation weirdly bad? The character designs look pretty good, especially given the challenge of translating Klasky-Csupo's notoriously weird/lumpy character designs into 3D and, despite the relatively low framerate, the actual animation looks pretty decent...But then whenever the characters start talking it just looks like they've been shot up with Novocain.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

SlothfulCobra posted:

RIP Kimi, you just were one too many characters for the show dynamics I guess. Maybe Chuckie's dad needs to stay sadder than Stu.

I'd stopped watching the show regularly by the time Kimi came along, didn't she end up basically just being "Another Tommy, but this one is a girl"? Either way, I feel like she was a better addition to the cast than loving Dil and his complete lack of personality or consequence. The one thing I can really hand to All Grown Up is that it managed to make Dil an actually worthwhile character.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

What's the name for the thing where if a part of the background were going to change in some way, like say if a character were going to burst through a wall in the background in the middle of a scene, that part of the background would be a slightly different color or look different from the rest? I swear there's a name for that, but I can't find a concise enough way to name it for a google search.

I've seen it listed as a "conspicuously light patch" or a "Fudd flag" on TVTropes, but I think that's just some of their weirdly insular, site-specific terminology rather than an industry term.

My favorite variant was in some of the old Coyote/Roadrunner shorts where the Coyote would be interacting with a background element painted on a cel and it would cause the matte painting background to fall away instead...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Let's not forget another show from the 90s that drifted into more serialized storytelling: Beast Wars. It's honestly amazing how many things that would normally be setbacks ended up making that show work: "Oh we don't have the budget to have more than a dozen character models? We'll just have a small cast and focus on characterization!" "Oh all the characters on our show are alien robots? Sweet, that means we can have them shoot each other and suffer horrific injuries and the censors won't get on our rear end!" "Oh we need to market a new wave of toys but still don't have the budget to have more than a dozen character models? gently caress it, we'll kill off a bunch of characters to make room for the new ones and move the story forward!"

Also: One of the other major setbacks of Danny Phantom was that it focused on high schoolers, which meant Butch Hartman was legally obligated to cram it full of all his issues about being picked on in high school, delivered with the subtlety of a brick to the face...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

The 7th Guest posted:

i hope anne finds her other shoe

The missing shoe wouldn't bother me so much if she wasn't still wearing the sock. Amphibia is wet and muddy, and it is miserably walking around with a wet sock!

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

MorningMoon posted:

Yeah, that's probably the ideal stopping point. My ramble on the show's issues:
so first 26 episodes are pretty great. Then season 2 finale ends with the leader, Shiro, seemingly dying to almost kill the big bad. This leads into Keith, the pilot of the Red Lion taking over. It takes 3 episodes for the team to adjust with a new lineup, while they're fighting the equivalent of Azula, Ty Lee and Mai from ATLA, one evil AU episode, an episode about how Shiro is actually alive and gets back with the team, a big lore flashback episode, and then we just take Keith out of the main cast so Shiro is back to leading.
The Azula equivalent kinda spends the rest of his time being the actual joke definition of morally gray "evil, but attractive, so who knows" with a slave planet but sometimes everyone acts like he has a point.
The pacing is all kinds of hosed for the four remaning seasons.
We spend nine episodes on a dreadful run back to earth where they don't have the fast travel, so it's just kinda edgy and sad. It's sorta cool, but if the show's grinding on you then this will be absolutely awful.
Much like this show's Azula's morals bouncing back and forth for a while, this show's Princess Allura spends way too long on a heel turn fakeout, only to be killed at the end.
They made a big deal in the leadup to the final season about how Shiro was gay all along and they'd go into it. He gets 1 flashback where his (implied) husband is around, and then we find out he died. In the final there's 1 frame where he married some new character.
The cast just doesn't feel like they get room to grow after those first two seasons. There's some cool hints of stuff here and there, specially in the stretch when Keith has to be the leader, but it never pays off.
can't really remember why, but i was very upset during the final few episodes. Just couldn't enjoy anything that was going on.


It also kind of loses focus when they kill off Zarkon at the start of season 5, and the series kind of flounders without a concrete Big Bad to fight against.

Speaking of: Has anybody noticed how killing off the main villain midway through a show has kind of been a thing over the past decade or so? Voltron did it, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil did it, BBC's Sherlock did it...It never seems to go well, so I'm kind of baffled why so many shows choose to do it. Is it an outgrowth of the relatively recent popularity of that "The villain gets captured midway through the movie but that was all part of his grand master plan!" schtick that The Dark Knight popularized or is there something else that inspired its rise in popularity?


Dog King posted:

Also is it me or does that fashion already look dated? The whole ankles and big coats over tight clothing thing was early 2010s. We're past that now

I mean, Jimmy's always been kind of a huge dweebus and walking fashion disaster, so this seems entirely in-line with the character. I hope that they also carry over the fact that he's been an inexplicable weirdness magnet even before he met Superman!

It's actually weird, because "A lighthearted sitcom that focuses on the staff of the daily planet and Clark's civilian life over his life as Superman" is a show concept I've been half-jokingly talking about on forums for years...

KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 02:12 on May 22, 2021

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Honestly the real issue with ship wars is more when people become fixated on the ship they support being "validated" by the source material and/or when they start warring with people who support opposing ships. You think Zutara is the best thing since sliced bread and take enjoyment from the idea of Zuko and Katara hooking up? More power to you, and you shouldn't let whether or not the show makes that canon hinder your enjoyment, it's all equally fictional.

That said, I did find it kind of amusing during the pre-release period of Legend of Korra when a lot of former Zutara shippers were latching onto the idea of Korra/Mako due to the characters visual similarities to Katara and Zuko, and then the show came out and the duo had a completely different dynamic. Also I was really tickled when it initially looked like they were going to exclusively focus on the Korra/Mako/Asami love triangle and play up Korra and Asami's rivalry, only to have Korra and Asami holding absolutely no animosity towards one another, even when they were direct rivals for Mako's affections and then by the end of the series they both just decide to forget about Mako and hook up with each other instead.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Amphibia thing I noticed: So I'm definitely not the first person to pick it up, but in the brief scene where we see Andrias and his former frog and toad friend their skin colours specifically match that of the Calamity Box's three gems. Even more interesting is that despite the species each of the three girls ended up hanging around for most of the series, Anne's counterpart in that trio is Andrias himself. I think it's especially interesting Andrias is chromatically tied to the gem of compassion given what we've seen of the character and I wonder if, as more info is revealed about the trio, the other two might also have failed to live up to the aspect of their associated gem.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Larryb posted:

And we have our first voiced footage of Lola from the new Space Jam movie:

https://twitter.com/thecinebr/status/1401660023424667650

Man, after Wabbit and The Looney Tunes Show went in such a different direction with her character and, y'know, gave her an actual personality beyond "You go, girl!" it's really weird seeing a take based on Lola Classic...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Man, that CGI does not look good: The movie industry is way too enamored of applying "realistic" textures regardless of whether or not it suits the character designs. I think the Tunes would look so much better if they didn't have the fur/fluff effects applied and just went with a texture that more closely mimics paint.

That said: I really liked LeBron's general attitude in the scenes at the start of the trailer: I think he really captures an attitude of almost childlike wonder at meeting Bugs that's just really endearing.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Open Source Idiom posted:

That was never going to happen. Cartoons did their bit by occasionally grudgingly accepting same sex attracted women and now injustice is over.

I'm going to be honest, I feel like trying to make a He-Man adaptation without any LGBTQ representation or at least homoerotic undertones is completely missing one of the core aspects of the franchise.

This isn't even me trying to make a joke or anything, despite a lot of pop culture portrayals of He-Man's sexuality being rooted in homophobic jokes, the franchise has pretty much always had a solid contingent of LGBTQ fans. This is to the point that I don't think the Masters of the Universe franchise would have had the same level of longevity if it didn't have a cult LGBTQ following in addition to its original intended audience. Give us a gay He-Man, cowards!

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
"If we were doing it today and if I had any say in it, we absolutely would introduce a gay character."

Oh my, what's this quote from a 2011 interview* with Erika Scheimer (Daughter of She-Ra producer Lou Scheimer who also provided a number of additional voices for the original She-Ra cartoon and publicly came out in 2007) doing here? The backlash to the new She-Ra cartoon is especially ironic to me as, according to interviews and comments from people who worked on the original show, She-Ra was always intended to be some degree of "woke" with making She-Ra a positive role model for young girls being a primary concern in the creation of the original series.

And that's the thing about the current breed of nerd-reactionaries: A lot of the entertainment of the era they lionize had progressive messages and elements that they'd scoff at if it cropped up in a newly released series, they just didn't pick up on these elements because they were dumb kids when they watched this stuff.


* - The original interview unfortunately appears to have fallen off the internet, but could probably be found via the Wayback by someone with more dedication to internet archaeology than I.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
To be fair, I feel like the shortcomings of the animation are more of a budget thing than a reflection of the people working on it.


Everyone posted:


I do like the way they're handling the romantic relationship (or at least the lead up to the relationship) with Luz and Amity on The Owl House. For one thing they never really came off as "enemies." At the start Amity is greatly irritated by Luz and her general disrespect for "the way things work." Meanwhile, Luz wants to be friends with Amity.

One thing about Luz is that she occasionally comes off as a person who likes the idea of something more than the thing itself. With all the I'm also not sure that she's actually figured out that Amity has feelings for her beyond friendship.

Meanwhile, Amity kind of reminds me of Pacifica Northwest from Gravity Falls. A person pressured (and who pressures herself) to conform to her family's goals/plans for her.

Didn't Dana Terrace say in an interview that part of her inspiration for the show came from her time working on some of the Pacifica-focused episodes of Gravity Falls? Or am I mixing her up with Matt Braly? Either way I agree that the build-up of the Amity/Luz romance is one of the strongest parts of The Owl House's writing and the major way the first season dropped the ball a bit narratively was by not tying that into the action of the finale.

Also Luz is way too much of an oblivious dork to have picked up on Amity's feelings for her yet, it's going to take Amity bluntly explaining her feelings several times before she clues in...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Pachylad posted:

I wasn't feeling Centaurworld, but y'know what, seeing some of the criticisms I think I'm excited for it now:

https://twitter.com/duane_moody/status/1404497367169003525?s=19

Yeah, I mean, who ever heard of a cartoon primarily aimed at kids but with much darker, more adult elements in the worldbuilding and ongoing narrative that had a simple, cartoony art style and parodic tone towards a lot of traditional story structure and a bunch of songs and musical numbers?



Oh I'm sorry, someone seems to have left this completely unrelated image lying around...


Seriously though, I don't understand this need people have to treat any piece of media that doesn't specifically appeal to them as being complete garbage that only morons and/or the morally degenerate would enjoy. Like, Centaurworld doesn't really seem like my bag from the trailer but I don't think a show like this existing is a failing of society or that it doesn't have an audience...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Man, it's gonna be really weird seeing Peter Potamus portrayed like in his original cartoons after Harvey Birdman...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

amigolupus posted:

Finally caught up to the thread again. I haven't found time to watch Amphibia or Owl House yet, but it's great to hear that it's bound to be a good time, and how Owl House is pretty cute and queer. I look forward to re-reading this thread and those spoiler bars. :v:

While Centaurworld doesn't grab me, it looks like it was made with a lot of heart and looks bizarre enough that word of mouth might get people to watch it. Jellystone looks promising, and I'm hoping the creators were fans of Harvey Birdman and sneak in some references.



*takes a deep breath* Okay, this got posted in the Fabgoon thread but I didn't see it here. The discussion a few pages back about queer reading and representation in cartoons was quite interesting, so I'm sure we can all agree that this attempt at representation is completely loving bizarre and painful on so many levels.

https://twitter.com/Most/status/1407715074853199874

I'm hoping this is just a case of the trailer being awful, but the impression I get of this show is that it's like Rick and Steve but with absolutely no self-awareness.


Mister Beeg posted:

I wonder if the reason Jonny Quest got away with it was because it aired on prime-time originally, meaning no Saturday Morning restrictions.

Man, that just reminds me of The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest from the mid 90s. While the show largely doesn't hold up very well (It leaned far too heavily into the 90s media obsession with "cyberspace" and features some really bad cgi all over the place) it was also weirdly hardcore about character death and the like. I remember nerve gas being a recurring element in various villains plots...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

SlothfulCobra posted:


I don't think Jabberjaw was so much a reference that audiences were expected to get or not, and it was more of a case of a voice actor just stealing a famous person's voice and mannerisms to make a character. It's an easy shortcut. I feel like there's a lot of cartoon characters like that who are sort of references but end up just stealing somebody's bit. Not like kids generally get a lot of references anyways. Animaniacs came out 5 years after Orson Welles died, but they still made Brain.

But also somebody does need to sound like Curly when Curly isn't here.

"Okay, maybe my dad did steal Itchy. But so what? Animation is built on plagiarism. If it weren’t for someone plagiarizing The Honeymooners we wouldn’t have The Flintstones. If someone hadn’t ripped off Sergeant Bilko, there’d be no Top Cat. Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear, hah! Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney. Your Honor, you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?"

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Mr Interweb posted:

yeah they remade almost everything.

also he lost his texan accent :v:

oh also you got the pics reversed. the second season bannon is the older one

So I was actually looking through the Wikipedia article when I first brought up The Real Adventures to refresh myself with the series and make sure my memories of it were accurate and not a crazed fever dream, and there actually is a behind the scenes explanation for this! There was a major shake-up in the production staff between seasons 1 and 2 that mostly happened because production on the first season fell way behind schedule (The season was originally intended for a 95 release of 65 episodes, but only 30 scripts and 8 reels had been completed by March of 1996, with the first season not airing until August 1996 with only 26 episodes). This shake-up included bringing in new writers and directors who included the changes in an attempt to bring the Real Adventures closer in line with earlier installments in the franchise.

This actually seriously messed with my head as a kid because one of the changes for season 2 was inexplicably aging the cast down (Jonny went from being 14 to 13, for example and Dr. Quest's hair color changed from grey to the more traditional red of the original show) which, when it started airing sporadically on Teletoon led me to believe the second season was actually an older installment in the franchise that the first season was a sequel to.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
That new episode of The Owl House was rad as all hell. I feel like the series is finally finding its narrative footing and hitting its stride.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Larryb posted:

Didn’t MOTU start life as a comic series (which apparently was pretty different from what eventually became the show)? Also are those original comics good/still available anywhere?

If I'm not mistaken, it started with the action figures, but those came packages with mini-comics that had a radically different plot than the eventual tv series and were more along the lines of Conan and other sword and sorcery stuff of the time.


drrockso20 posted:

True though the reasons He-Man does it aren't quite as heinous as sometimes has happened in the entertainment industry;

1) they realized early in their research that kids are attracted to power and having that reflected in the toy designs would help(same with things like the phrase "I Have The Power")

2) making the toys huge and muscular and a more exciting default pose helped them stand out compared to how most action figures of the time were copying the Star Wars style

3) many of the people working on MOTU as it started were big fans of Conan, Frazetta, and Body Builders so that also reflected in the aesthetic

Indeed the impossible standards only really apply to the men, the women characters feel pretty reasonable all things considered even if a bit lacking in body type variety

Also don't forget 4) The suits weren't going to shill out extra cash for more than one body mould.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

xeria posted:

It doesn't need to be Eda specifically saying anything about Luz having a crush so much as just an off-hand "you're being extra-weird lately"-esque comment, but maybe in this scenario Lillith would've been best positioned to notice anything. She knows Amity - and probably the whole Blight family - from her time with the Emperor's Coven. Regardless, these are just potential ideas and I don't think it'd be all that arduous to take a couple seconds of non-focus episodes to continue what are clearly intended to be long-running narrative/character arcs, even if it's strictly visual and not elaborated on in the moment.

That said, it feels a little weird at this point how mostly separated the Hexside kids and Owl House folks still are from each other, considering how important both are to Luz's journey.

I think that gets into a little bit of the difficulties the show had in the first season with the over-arching metaplot: It did a really good job of setting up Amity's developing feelings for Luz, but didn't really tie that into the first season's main myth arc. This led to us getting a lot of focus on Amity and Luz interacting with each other and developing a rapport, but in a way that didn't tie into the plot threads that became important for the first season's finale and, presumably, the larger myth arc of the story, I think the writers have improved one their longform storytelling thus far with the second season, but are still running into the problem that their core emotional arc (Luz and Amity's romance) is separate from their core narrative arc (Emperor Belos, the door and Eda's past) and I don't think they have the luxury of enough episodes to keep exploring these as separate plot threads and need to find a way to tie Luz and Amity's romance into the myth arc more directly.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Android Blues posted:

The isekai classification's only arisen pretty recently, though, right? And it typically describes works with extremely familiar, almost rigid genre tropes rather than stuff that's analogous to the entire history of portal fantasy. Almost without exception, characters are transplanted into a virtual or fantastical world that is rigidly adherent to the common mores of its genre (whether that genre is fantasy, romance, martial arts, etc.) where they then attempt to thrive.

It's important to the genre that the isekai world characters are thrown into is immediately recognisable to the audience, in fact that it draws explicitly on genre cliches, so that minimal setting-building or exposition needs to occur. The character being intuitively familiar with the mores of the setting isn't necessary, but does often follow from that requirement.

I'm pretty sure "isekai" has only been used to describe things dating back to the late 2000s, and almost exclusively the things it describes meet that description. Arguably it's a sub-genre of portal fantasy, where the breadth of theme is often much wider and settings are often much more textured, or bizarre.

The Owl House possibly is an isekai by this qualification though, yeah, because its cliched genre world where the tropes are immediately recognisable to the audience is "Harry Potter".

Yeah, I think this summarizes my own thoughts given what I know about the term and its distinction from broader portal fantasy. If isekai is a broad enough concept that it can be applied to all portal fantasy, there's not really much need for it to exist as a term on its own.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Covok posted:

Got to be real with y'all. No one ever heard the term Portal Fantasy before. Everyone has heard of an Isekai.

Uh, "Portal Fantasy" is a really well established and recognized term within fantasy fiction circles. It's also a really self-explanatory term if you're even passingly familiar with the usual tropes of fantasy fiction considering the idea of a normal person being transported to a fantasy world is a trope as old as the fantasy genre itself (Having its roots in proto-fantasy literature like The Wizard of Oz and early defining works of fantasy fiction like The Chronicles of Narnia). You could say "Portal Fantasy" to an English-speaking fantasy fan who'd never heard the term before and they could very easily parse out what it means by context.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
About the new Owl House episode I would like to say: That shot at the start of the episode where we see all the heads of the various covens was anime as all hell, and that's not a complaint. I was looking at them all standing there all dramatic and thinking "Okay, which Straw Hat is going to have to face off against which coven head?".

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

Do people even care that much about He-Man any more? It’s a slightly older property than transformers or the small G I Joe toys. The She-Ra outrage stuff seemed highly performative in that most of the talk came from people who have to comment on pop culture every day for their livelihood.

See, the fantasy adventure cartoon I grew up with was Conan the Adventurer, which was already a complete bastardization of the source material*!

* - To be fair to the people who worked on the show, there were actually a bunch of little nods and references to stuff from the classic Conan stories, so I don't think it was a case of the people working on it not caring so much as it being a case of if being impossible to make a faithful adaptation of Conan the loving Barbarian for the 6-12 market...

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

No no, I mean that the kind of people who are upset about the new cartoon being "too political" or whatever don't like stuff that's GLBTQ-friendly, and that the original show is in a way that's probably intentional to some degree.

I think there's general two types of people that get really big into online outrage about kids' cartoons in this manner: You've got the actual capital C CHUDs, and people who are terminally self-focused about media. The latter group isn't inherently lovely or reactionary but is very short-sighted in how they view media and as a result are easily manipulated by the CHUDs. To them, media is something that can be objectively measured as Good or Bad and they are obviously consumers of Good media. Since they obviously enjoy Good media, any media that they do not enjoy must therefore be Bad. Because they think a piece of media' goodness or badness is an objective metric, that means that things like a tv show they don't like having a high score on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB is not just a case of differing opinions, but a case of these websites not reflecting what they view as objective reality and is something that, in their worldview, must be corrected. It's the same sort of mindset you see from people who complain about reviews not being "objective" if they consider aspects of a work that they don't care about like representation or racial or social overtones.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

JazzFlight posted:

I don’t really know anything about He-Man from the 80s show, so is there a recap video on YouTube or should I go into the new show blind?

Got you covered...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR7wOGyAzpw

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Geo Fixer posted:

Jellystone gave me quite a few good laughs, real good wholesome fun.

I'm enjoying it thus far, especially Auggie Doggy and Doggie Daddy. I also appreciate the dynamic they have going with Yogi, Cindy and Boo Boo; particularly the way they avoid the cliché "The guys are the goofy, wacky ones who get into all the funny hijinx, while the lady is the competent mom who rolls her eyes at the wackiness and is boring". Cindy's definitely the leader of the trio, but she's just as deranged and likely to cause mayhem as Yogi.

KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack
Doggie Daddy's overprotective dad schtick works for me mostly because if Augie's reaction to it, or rather her lack thereof. Other shows would probably have Augie be either combative towards her overbearing father or be sheltered to the point of dysfunction, but the show itself goes in a different direction by having her really love and care for her dad but also be completely amenable to being independent as well. She just happily seems to go with the flow.

So it's an interesting dynamic to me that DD is hyper-protective of Augie while at the same time being a completely and total wreck who falls to pieces when she's not around, while she pretty much just casually adapts to whatever situation she's thrust into.

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KingKalamari
Aug 24, 2007

Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back
My ship of love is ready to attack

Xelkelvos posted:

I honestly have no idea if they'd ever bring in the Scooby gang. Especially as it'd potentially coincide with the Velma series that's being produced. Otoh, Birdman is free and I'd hope they pull a low-key reference to Attorney At Law. The well is deep for obscure HB properties to riff on or through without even having to pull on the other well known bits that they haven't done already. Heck, there's still one other mystery solving team with a dog that they haven't referenced yet that isn't Scooby-Doo. (yes, there are three HB mystery solving teams with a dog)

Actually there's at least 5: There's also Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids and Buford And The Galloping Ghost. You can probably include Blue Falcon and Dynomutt & Marvin, Wendy and Wonder Dog from Superfriends as well, depending on how far you're willing to stretch the definition of "mystery-solving team".

Oh and there was also a dog sidekick named "Mr. Cool" on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, though I can't remember if they also solved mysteries.

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